The New England Fishery Management Council has raised a red flag over indications that market dynamics in the virtual commodification of the groundfishery is yielding a concentration of catch shares' ownership in a small number of hands.
After hearing a staff report that 41 percent of the allocation of Georges Bank winter flounder is now controlled by three entities, the council voted to ask the National Marine Fisheries Service to publish a "control date" beyond which the acquisition of permits "may be treated differently than permits acquired before the control date," according to written summary by the council of its meeting last month in Portsmouth, N.H.
Whether and how NMFS might decide to limit concentration of ownership of the groundfishery was put off pending the completion of a staff "white paper on fleet diversity and accumulation limits."
The catch share regimen, known as Amendment 16, was approved and launched last May 1 without any rules to control concentrations of ownership.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.